Watching Tv shows taped!

Cassie has been a big fan of the daytime talk show the Talk for a while now.  She commented several times about how much she'd like to sit in the audience sometime.  In my house what the wife wants the wife gets! : >

We had a wedding anniversary coming up so I checked into it.  Turns out it's pretty easy to get tickets to see many shows being taped.  You can go to the official website for the show or one of several websites that have the function of putting rear ends in the seats of the shows like www.tvtickets.com.  I can't say I'm a big fan of the Talk but do like the Tonight Show with Jay Leno.  I went online and was able to get tickets to both shows.  Below are our experiences for each show.

The Talk
This show seats just over 160.  This is a show that is taped live at 11a in Los Angeles at the main area for CBS.  We were instructed to be at the parking area at 915a.  We got there at 855a and was sent away to come back at 915a.  There was a line of ladies on the sidewalk that turned out were waiting for standby tickets.  Most all the shows will have tickets from people that did not show that they give away to people that wait it out.  We were around 20th in line.  They not only make you sign a two page release that no one reads, but they take a digital picture of you holding your signed document.  You then enter the gate.

Once you enter the gate you learn the worst thing in life you can do is try to take a picture anywhere near the filming area.  Even in the back lots walking to the filming area this is strictly taboo!  They were not as rude about it here as they were at the Tonight Show yet still made their points clear.

When you go inside to be seated when you got there or the number you have on your placement card means little.  The shows clearly have their demographics.  They pick the people they want to be seen on camera and seat them in the front rows. They seemed to try to give a good mix of all races and ages so people at home would see that show appeals to everyone!  I found out quickly the ladies seating people don't think it's funny when you complain about not being in the front row or try to move to a different seat from what they first put you.

We got a pretty good seat in the front row of the second area with a good view of the ladies.  A guy comes out early to warm up the audience.  He throws t-shirts into the stands.  Luckily I was a foot taller than the old ladies in my section and caught one for Cassie. Out of the 160 seats I would guess only 10 were filled with males like myself.  The warm up guy picked six of us guys to go up front and dance one at a time for a Talk coffee cup.  Let's just say I was screwed royally and didn't get to show off my white man overbite dancing skills.  Cassie got the shirt but no coffee cup.

The two guests were Peter Facinelli (the father vampire on Twilight) and Tracey Gold (she was on the 80s tv show Growing Pains).  Neither are big stars yet entertaining guests.

While the filming is going on in our sections there is a guy with a hand held camera pointing right at us for much of the show to film audience reactions.  They tell you not to look at the camera and to react wildly to anything said.  I thought we were on camera alot.  Upon watching I see we only made it maybe 10 seconds at the very end of the show.

During commercial breaks the ladies were invaded by several women I can guess are some sort of producers that prepare them for the next section.  While they are doing this the warm up guy comes out and tells jokes to the audience.  He asks Cassie and me how we met and what our first date was.  He was surprise to hear our first date was country dancing.  He said she must have felt sorry for me after what he saw in my dancing abilities. : >

After the show was filmed all the ladies took turns filming three second clips that are seen in commercial breaks of other shows I guess.  This was very entertaining as Sharon Osborne could not get any of the names right and showed the cursing she was so famous for on her reality show years ago.

It was a fun experience for me and many times better for Cassie who is such a fan of the show.

I got long winded here so I'll put the Tonight Show on another page...